Chương 120: In the Ring of Monsters

Lloyd hesitated for a moment, briefly entertaining the thought that he'd simply imagined it all — exhaustion, the tense anticipation of monsters, an overactive imagination after a long day of hunting. But he didn't let himself dwell on it and slowly turned around, feeling every muscle in his body tense in anticipation of something inevitable. Well, his hearing hadn't failed him. There it stood...

The creature stood over two meters tall, towering over Lloyd with its unnaturally elongated frame, as though shaped by some careless, hurried hand that hadn't bothered with proportions. Its body looked excessively thin and long: slender arms hung down almost to its knees, swaying with the slightest movement like loose ropes, and its legs were disproportionately tall, ending in long, curved fingers resembling claws, digging deep into the island's soft earth and leaving narrow, deep imprints behind.

Its body was concealed beneath dark, tattered clothing, made up of numerous long, ragged strips of cloth that fluttered in that same strange, gusting wind he'd felt a moment earlier. The fabric covered its shoulders, chest, and back, hanging loosely at the sides and almost entirely obscuring the creature's true shape, as though deliberately made to hide something even more frightening beneath it.

Around its neck sat a wide, uneven collar, from beneath which additional strips of fabric trailed downward, crackling faintly with every gust, like dry, weathered skin. The creature's head was elongated and strangely narrow. The upper part was covered in a rough, gray surface, resembling dried skin or an old, cracked mask — the kind Lloyd had once seen behind thick, protective glass in museums back in his old world.

The lower half of its face was completely hidden behind the dark fabric of its clothing, so that neither mouth nor chin was visible, nor any hint of human features at all, as though nothing but emptiness lay beneath that cloth. The only distinct features were two large, round eyes with amber irises. They stood out sharply against the gray head, seeming far too large for any face, glowing with a dim, unblinking light in the island's muted twilight, like two tiny, frozen embers.

Behind its head hung long, thin strips of fabric, resembling tangled hair or the remnants of a hood. They trailed far back, swaying lazily in the air, lending the creature an even stranger, more otherworldly look, as though it had just emerged from some other, far darker world entirely disconnected from familiar reality. In one hand it held a long, thin spear, nearly as tall as the creature itself.

Its point was aimed downward, almost touching the ground, and along the metal glinted a thin, dried crust of something dark, distantly resembling blood — whether someone else's, or, a far more unsettling thought, left behind here by some previous, less fortunate visitor to the island. It was utterly terrifying — so much so that Lloyd's throat went dry instantly, and his palms, which had been gripping the sword's hilt tightly a moment before, suddenly turned unpleasantly damp.

He hoped with everything in him that the creature had landed here purely by chance, that it would simply pass by without so much as sparing him a glance, that this whole nightmare would turn out to be just another one of Oblivion's oddities, having nothing to do with him at all — another terrifying but harmless sight, like the motionless lake or the islands' warped time. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Lloyd didn't breathe, didn't think, froze in place, as though stillness alone could save him from danger, could hide him from those unblinking amber eyes. He hoped with everything he had to get out of this situation unscathed. But unfortunately, the monster was looking straight at him with those amber eyes. Straight into his own eyes, filling with mounting, sticky dread that sent small, icy chills racing across his whole body.

"Please. Not here. Not now." The Thin Creature took a step toward Lloyd, leveling its spear at him — the motion smooth, almost graceful, entirely unhurried, as though the creature had long since grown accustomed to the hunt and was in no rush at all, savoring that very moment when its prey first began to grasp its own doom.

Without a second thought, Lloyd could come up with nothing better than to run, spinning on his heel and bolting away as fast as his legs would carry him, snapping the branches of the low shrubs blocking his path. He turned back, and before he could even take a step, another creature — pale, thin, identical to the first — landed in front of him with a soft, almost soundless thump, kicking up a small cloud of dust and flattened grass.

It looked down at him with its amber eyes, poised to plunge into him the small, dully gleaming dagger held in its free, bony hand, its long fingers slowly tightening around the grip.

And behind it, he heard several more of the same creatures land one after another, closing in around him in a tight, silent ring, making it unmistakably clear that there was nowhere left to run — from every direction now, identical, unblinking amber eyes stared back at him, the thin strips of their tattered garments swaying quietly in the island's still, breath-held air, as though nature itself had frozen in anticipation of the inevitable outcome.

"Six. There are six of them, and I'm alone," raced through his mind, a desperate, frantic thought, as his eyes darted wildly from one creature to the next, searching desperately for even the smallest gap in that tight, silent circle.

Not one of the creatures made a sound — no growl, no hiss, not a single word — they simply, silently drew the circle tighter, their long, bony fingers adjusting their grip on their weapons, while the tattered strips of their garments kept swaying lazily in the still air, as though living some separate life of their own. Somewhere behind Lloyd, a branch snapped again, a reminder that he had almost no time left to think.

Slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements, he tightened his grip on the sword's hilt, feeling his sweat-slicked fingers slide against the leather-wrapped surface. His eyes darted from one creature to another, desperately searching for even the slightest weakness in their coordinated, almost mechanical formation, but each of them held its distance with unsettling, practiced precision, as though all six moved as a single, unified organism, driven by one and the same purpose.

"Stay calm. Just stay calm. Panic will kill me faster than they will," he tried to convince himself, though his own heart was pounding somewhere up in his throat with such force it nearly drowned out every other sound around him.